American doctor Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Infectious Diseases, said this Tuesday at the US Senate hearing in Washington that “we are clearly not in full control now” of the U.S. pandemic.
“We will continue to have a lot of problems” if people don’t start to maintain social distance and wear masks, he warns.
Currently, the daily cases of covid-19 in the US are in the 40,000 a day range. The daily rate of infection “can easily reach 100,000 a day if we don’t reverse the trend,” says Fauci, adding that “I wouldn’t be surprised” if I saw such a high rate of infection. “It will be very disturbing, I assure you.”
The expert who is part of the White House task force to combat covid-19 refused, however, to predict the number of deaths that the current wave could cause, but according to an estimate released last week by the Center for Disease Prevention and Control, the country could reach between 130,000 to 150,000 deaths by July 18.
The current number is at least 126,000 deaths and more than 2.59 million total contagions, with four US states (California, Texas, Arizona and Florida) representing half of the new cases.
USA are going “in the wrong direction”
Before the Senate, Anthony Fauci expressed concern “about what is happening now, especially in the four states that account for about 50% of new infections”.
“I am not satisfied with what is happening, because we are going in the wrong direction,” said Fauci.
Despite the decision by President Donald Trump to cut off relations with the World Health Organization (WHO), a senior American official said on Tuesday that the United States continues to work with it.
“I was not called back, I was not instructed to leave,” said Brett Giroir, deputy secretary of health and a member of the WHO executive board.
“In any case, there will probably be another executive council in October, I believe we will continue to work with WHO as members with regard to public health standards,” he added.
The covid-19 pandemic has already claimed more than 505,500 deaths and infected more than 10.32 million people in 196 countries and territories, according to a report by the French agency AFP.
The disease is transmitted by a new coronavirus detected in late December in Wuhan, a city in central China.
After Europe succeeded China as the center of the pandemic in February, the American continent is now the one with the most confirmed cases and the most deaths.
Updated at 20:05
– .
